


Operational Tempo

by kaasknot, stargard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clonecest, Dirty Sex, Fun with heart monitors, Hospital Sex, Light Nipple Play, M/M, Military Fraternization, Quickies, Semi-Public Sex, blowjob, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:42:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24462955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaasknot/pseuds/kaasknot, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargard/pseuds/stargard
Summary: “I ambored, Rex, and I do not fucking know what’s going on with myship, or mymen, and if I need some distraction, then trust that I’m not overstating the severity of my need.”
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/CT-7567 | Rex
Comments: 17
Kudos: 261





	Operational Tempo

**Author's Note:**

> kaa: so stargard dropped art in a trash server we're both part of, and fic _had_ to happen, okay, it had to be done. 24 hours of frantic scribbling later and now there's a matched set. You're welcome.
> 
> Takes place between the Bad Batch arc and the Siege of Mandalore.

Rex popped his helmet seals and breathed in the air of the Anaxes MOB medbay. It reeked of bacta and disinfectant and was thick with the sound of droids. He flagged down a passing medic. “Where’s Commander Cody?”

The medic blinked, seemingly surprised at having been accosted by an unwashed 501st trooper still in armor. He didn’t make an issue of it, though, just pointed. “Ward 3. You’ve got good timing; they just took him out of bacta.”

Rex’s heart jolted. “He had to go in bacta?”

“I’ll say. A pneumothorax, bruised liver, and lacerated intestines. He’s _damn_ lucky he didn’t bleed out, or that the peritonitis didn’t kill him.” His gaze sharpened. “You were the one who called in the medevac?”

Rex nodded.

“Well, you saved his life. He coded three times between dustoff and dunking.”

A punch to the solar plexus would have hurt less. “Is he…?”

“Yeah, he’ll be fine.” The medic nodded down the hall. “Ward 3.”

“Thanks,” Rex said over his shoulder, already double timing it. He passed med droids, clone orderlies, medics, and surgeons; he passed one Kaminoan, who must have pissed someone off and got given the shit detail for his residency. Countless stubby mouse droids zipped by underfoot, cleaning up the endless spills of blood, vomit, shit, and urine.

Ward 3 was quiet. A recovery ward, Rex thought, for overnight observation rather than intensive care. Most of the soldiers were 327th, from Felucia. Rex had heard about the action there: an ugly, entrenched siege that didn’t look to end any time soon. He hoped Bly was doing okay.

Cody was about midway down, dozing under one of the industrial cotton, easily-washed medical blankets. It had fallen down to his waist; Rex didn’t have much attention to spare for the view, however, because of the bacta patch over Cody’s chest and the ugly scar over his abdomen, still pink from the freshly-removed staples. Rex moved forward slowly, inside the scant cover of the privacy screens—he’d laughed more than once, with the black humor of the chronically stressed and fatalistic, that they got more privacy in the medbay than in their own barracks—and set his bucket down on the table by the head of the bed.

Cody stirred. “Wha’sit?”

“Just me.”

“Rex.” Cody relaxed. “Glad you made it back.”

“Me too. Don’t take this the wrong way, Commander, but you look like hell.”

Cody groaned. “How many times to I have to _tell_ you—”

“Old habits,” Rex said, brushing him off. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, now that I’m out of bacta.”

Rex could only imagine. Somehow, he’d never had to go into bacta. The whole damn war, and the worst he’d ever gotten was a half-charge shot to the chest plates by a sniper too far away to make it count.

Cody’d gone in twice, now. Rex looked at him, and he looked so… fragile, lying on that thin hospital mattress. They all were; it was hard to believe how immortal he’d felt, as a newly-deployed trooper. Like death could never touch him.

If only that had been true.

“How did it go with the Bad Batch?” Cody asked, knocking him out of his funk.

“You’re gonna debrief me from a hospital bed?” Rex asked, raising a brow.

Cody made a show of checking under the blanket. “Well, I figured fair was fair.”

Rex snorted, shaking his head. “You’re an asshole, sir.”

“ _Cody_.”

Rex leaned in to lay a gentle kiss on his lips. “Cody.”

“You smell like a dead bantha.”

“And you smell like old bacta and stale bodysuit funk. Don’t go throwing grenades.” He sat on the edge of the bed and ran his gloved thumb along the outside edge of the scar. “What's this from?”

“Apparently a chunk of my armor tried to take out my guts. Luckily, it also plugged the hole.”

“You know you’re supposed to keep your armor on the _outside_ , right?”

Cody shrugged, hiding a wince badly. “I like to live on the edge. And you didn’t answer my question.”

Rex made a face. “We got the job done, sir.”

“That well, huh.”

“They… they occupy a valuable place in the GAR. They took in Echo without question. Gave him a squad again.” Rex sighed. “But that doesn’t mean I have to _like_ them.”

Cody laughed at him, low and soft. “Crosshair got under your skin, did he?”

Rex glowered. “Fuck you.”

“I fucking _wish_. They’ve got me on bedrest for at least another day, and they won’t even let me have a datapad.”

“They know better than to let you have a datapad,” Rex said with a crooked smile. “They remember what happened the last time.”

“Okay, that was—they were going to requisition fifteen _thousand_ kilos of tibanna instead of fifteen _hundred_ , we don’t even have the room—”

“Pile it in the hangar,” Rex said with a shrug. “Plenty of room in the hangar.”

Cody narrowed his eyes. Rex couldn’t hold back the twitch of his lips.

“You’re a little _shit_ , CT-7567.”

“Maybe. But you didn’t need to go streaking through medbay to put the fear of Cody in a shiny’s heart. You can use comms for that. Or airdrop. Or send a runner. Or—”

“I like putting the fear of me into shinies,” Cody said, his eyes soft. “I don’t have many outlets, you know.”

A thought popped into Rex’s head, and he started laughing. “Hey, did you see that one birther vid, the giant lizard that breathed fire?”

“At _least_ three times. Ghost Company refused to watch anything else for a month of movie nights.”

“Just—I just pictured you as that lizard, going apeshit on some di’kut who missed a decimal place—”

“Oh, come on.”

“Spewing straight up _fire_ at him in your fury—”

“It was _three hundred thousand credits_ , Rex, that _literally_ costs more than we do!”

“Local GAR Commander quoted yelling ‘HWARGAAAAARGHAGL’ at hapless shiny—”

Cody dragged him down by the cuirass and kissed him silent. Rex had to brace against the bed to keep from falling on him. It lingered, deepening until tongue came into play; Rex traced the inside of Cody’s upper lip, then touched their tongue-tips together, just because.

“The medics are gonna give you hell,” a brother across the ward called out.

Rex didn’t see it, he was more interested in climbing down Cody’s throat, but he felt Cody raise his hand—no doubt to engage in handsigns unbecoming of an officer.

“Fuck you too, sir,” the trooper replied, laughing. “I’ll be there at your funeral.”

“Wanna give them a show?” Cody said quietly, panting a little.

Rex almost said yes before his brain caught up. “Are you cleared for strenuous physical activity?”

Cody’s expression went mulish. “I’m _fine_ , it’s barely a scratch.”

“Uh-huh. And how many painkillers are you on, again?”

“...Enough.”

Rex shifted his weight and gently touched the edge of the bacta patch over Cody’s chest. “What’s this for?”

Cody sighed. “They had to put in a chest tube before they could put me in bacta. Re-expand my lung. They couldn’t leave me in long enough for it to heal all the way.”

Rex didn’t question that. The war was a meat-grinder, and there was always a brother who needed bacta more than you. “You really shouldn’t be fucking around,” he said. “You need to heal.”

“I _need_ mental stimulation. Fett’s sake, I’m going insane, here, Rex!”

“A model patient, our marshal commander,” Rex said wryly. “Have you made any medics cry, yet?”

Cody scowled. “If you don’t get down here, I’ll get the fuck out of this bed and come to you.”

Rex sighed. “Cody.”

True to his word, Cody started grimly pulling at his blanket. Rex caught sight of vicious-looking bruises and the trail of hair leading down Cody’s stomach before he hurriedly pinned Cody back to the bed. “The fuck is wrong with you!”

“I am _bored_ , Rex, and I do not fucking know what’s going on with my _ship_ , or my _men_ , and if I need some distraction, then trust that I’m not overstating the severity of my need.”

He was panting, by the end of it. Not like after a hard run, but Rex couldn’t help thinking he’d had a collapsed lung not three days ago. He’d almost _died_ three days ago, and like everything else in this goddamn _fucking_ war, there was nothing Rex could have done to prevent it.

Whatever was on his face, it made Cody’s expression twist in sympathy. “Stop that,” he said, reaching up to brush Rex’s cheek.

“Stop what?”

“Whatever it is you’re thinking. You’re already too serious, Rex. Don’t… don’t beat yourself up over this.”

Rex took Cody’s hand. “Don’t think about the very real possibility that you might die and I won’t be there to stop it?”

“Yeah, that.” Cody reached down and grabbed Rex in the space between cuisse and cod.

“The _fuck_ —”

“Maybe it’s not me who needs the distraction. Think I’d be doing a valuable service, taking your mind off things.”

Rex didn’t say anything. He just sat back and looked away.

Cody slipped his hand off Rex’s thigh. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I won’t force it.”

The thing was. Rex knew what it looked like when Cody put on a show to guilt him into doing something. This wasn't it. He just looked... tired. And a little scared, his eyes restlessly scanning the narrow confines of the ward.

And the thing was, there was a little part of Rex that was _glad_ Cody had pushed like he had. He’d never take the risk, otherwise. And he still wasn't sure, down in his bones, that Cody had actually made it. The old, familiar need to reaffirm life was kicking around in his loins, and Rex really didn't have that much common sense, when it came down to it.

“Fucking—mirsh solus asshole chakaar,” he muttered, getting up against Cody’s dismay to check both sides of the ward. There weren’t any medics or droids about; clear for now. “You squeal, I’m writing you up for insubordination,” Rex said, pointing to the brother opposite them.

“Good luck with that,” he said easily. “Pretty sure major outranks captain.”

“ _I’ll_ write you up,” Cody said, his face cracked open with sudden hope. “Pretty sure marshal commander outranks major.”

“You’re a lucky bastard, sir.”

“In so many ways,” Cody murmured as Rex descended on him.

Medbay beds weren’t designed with fraternization in mind, but Rex made it work. He lowered the side rail on his side, then planted a knee between Cody’s. He could already see the swell of Cody’s cock against the blanket, but he skipped over that, for now; he braced himself against the mattress and held himself over Cody so he didn’t crush him. Dirty armor and still-pink injuries were a bad mix. When they kissed, it was with ferocity. Every scared, angry emotion Rex balled up and shoved aside so he could function, he pulled out and visited on Cody’s mouth.

The heart monitor beside Cody’s bed lit off like a radiation detector in the middle of a reactor leak.

Cody spoke first, after a pregnant pause. “Either you get me off before they send someone to investigate—”

“Or you test your control over your autonomic nervous system?” Rex raised a brow. “Losing odds, there, brother.”

They stared at each other. Leader boards re-leveled. Bets were made. Odds calculated.

“Slow start, fast finish,” Cody said, in his command voice. “Get me hard, then get me _off_.”

“Yessir,” Rex said. He went for Cody’s neck, first. There were a lot of nerve endings, in the neck; lots of hot spots. He systematically demolished them, slow enough that Cody had time to catch his breath and steady his heartrate, but fast enough that he was humping Rex’s armored leg soon enough.

“I’m never getting this taste out of my mouth,” Rex murmured against Cody’s skin.

“I thought you _liked_ week-old blacks BO.”

Rex moved back up to Cody’s mouth. “Not that. The bacta.” He kissed him, to share the joy.

“Oh _God_ —”

“My loyalty to you is beyond reproach.” Rex nipped at Cody’s earlobe, listening for the heart monitor to pace himself.

“I’ll get you a medal,” Cody said, his breathing metronome-steady. “Get the best scrimshawers on it. You want it on my armor? I’ve got to replace all my belly plates, now.”

Rex pulled back to look down at him. “You want me to wear your armor?”

Cody’s eyes skittered away, but Rex didn’t miss the faint pressure of his hips rocking against Rex’s thigh. “It’s just a medal. A _joke_ medal.”

Rex bent to kiss Cody again, deep and slow. “I’ll keep it next to my tallies.”

The heart monitor beeped jarringly. “Fuck off,” Cody mumbled into Rex’s mouth, his hands reaching for Rex’s belt, his kama, to part the blastweave and grab the tops of Rex’s cuisses.

Rex broke away with a parting nip to Cody’s lip. “Come on, ‘slow start, fast finish’. Breathing pattern delta, don’t get me busted for breaking medbay regs.”

It took Cody a moment, staring up at Rex with a wild-eyed expression. Rex listened to his breathing. Sounded clear to him, but he wasn’t a medic.

It didn’t matter how many times he did this. Staring at Cody. It always felt like there was something new to see. The way his scar puckered at the edge of his eye, where it met the little crow’s feet when he smiled or squinted; the bright, knowing gleam in his eye that went razor-sharp when someone fucked up in his presence; the way his hair looked when it was mussed out of regulation perfection. Rex ran his hand through Cody’s hair. It was short, but there was curl enough to get mussed.

“Fett’s sake,” he muttered, wiping the crusted bacta off on the pillow next to Cody’s head. “Don’t they ever clean you?”

Cody shrugged. “They get the important stuff. But no, they’re not gonna give a bed bath to every brother in here, not unless it’s really dire. They’ve got more important things to do.”

“Undying loyalty,” Rex said in a flat tone.

“Like this is the worst you’ve ever seen. Or _I’ve_ ever seen, don’t tell me you forgot Felucia already.”

“We don’t say the F-word in this ward,” the patient to their left said.

“We also don’t listen in on private conversations,” Rex snapped back.

“Hey,” Cody said gently, bringing Rex’s attention back to him. “Thank you.”

Rex glowered at him for half a moment, but he wasn’t really angry. If he was honest, his brain was switching off with every milliliter of blood that got rerouted to his dick, so the thought of sucking down Cody’s rank, bacta- and old sweat-covered cock was listing toward “hot” rather than “gross.”

He leaned back down and kissed Cody’s forehead. “This is a favor that I will cash in after I’ve been in armor for a week straight.”

“Deal,” Cody said with a soft, happy smile.

“Fucked in the head,” Rex muttered, kissing that smile off his face, then trailing back down his neck. He had to scooch himself back to reach comfortably—there wasn’t a lot of give, in armor—but soon enough he was level with Cody’s nipples.

They didn’t have a whole lot of time, medbays had security perimeters and watches that would put the securest base to shame, but they had time enough for _this_. Rex planted his thumbs over Cody’s nipples and circled them, dragging the grips against sensitive flesh.

Cody gasped, his hips jerking up.

“Breathe,” Rex said, doing it again. The heart monitor ramped up the beeping, but it still sounded inside the safety zone. Cody put his head back, thrusting his chest up a little to meet Rex’s hands—but it was short-lived. He winced and had to drop back to the bed.

“Just lay there and let me work,” Rex said, then switched to rolling Cody’s nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. They swelled and stiffened up, their flat brown turning dark and flushed, and Rex’s mouth watered. He switched the motion again—always had to change up the tactic, before the target developed a resistance against it. It worked for nipples, necks, and cocks as well as it worked for droids. The bacta patch was right there, so Rex made the executive decision to push Cody’s nipples over against the stiff edge of it.

Cody’s hips rocked up against Rex’s plackart, and he gave a single, shivery moan.

Rex looked up. Cody was working through a breathing exercise, one he remembered learning himself on the ARC course, and his heartrate was elevated, but not to danger close levels. His eyes were closed and his expression fixed with concentration. Still watching his face, Rex leaned forward and licked over one of his nipples, tasting bacta and skin. He pressed in against it with the strength of his tongue, and Cody’s face creased in almost pain.

“Rex,” he said softly, reaching up and brushing his hand back and forth over Rex's hair.

Rex moved over and repeated it on the other nipple, pressing it into Cody’s chest with his tongue, before sucking it into his mouth. It firmed up beautifully, nice and fat and sensitive, and Cody was arching again before his brain could tell him otherwise.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed, dropping back to the bed.

“Stay down, or we’re not doing this,” Rex said flatly.

“I’m down, I’m down,” Cody said, his voice thready. He breathed through several cycles, and some of the tension left his muscles. “I’m good.”

Rex paused and took stock. He didn’t hear any footsteps coming their way. Cody was tenting out the blanket, and Rex was _definitely_ hard in his codpiece. He stroked a hand up Cody’s cock, and it felt hard enough, but his balls weren’t quite rucked up enough to go for broke the way they needed—but that changed as soon as Rex touched them. Cody smacked his hand against the opposite side rail. “Little _Gods_ ,” he gasped, hanging on for dear life. “A little warning?”

“Just testing your reflexes, ner vod,” Rex replied. He massaged Cody’s stones in his hand, through the barrier of his glove and one thin medbay blanket, and Cody held himself steady against the bed, his mouth falling open and this thighs spreading at Rex’s touch.

The heart monitor beeped.

“Breathe,” Rex said, tugging gently on his tender handful, and feeling them spring back against Cody’s body with a will.

“I hate you,” Cody replied, his teeth clenched.

“No, you don’t. Think you’re ready to gun the engines?”

“Fast and hard,” Cody said.

“Fast and hard,” Rex agreed. Then he sat upright. First, he checked the ward, leaning back over Cody’s legs to see past the privacy screens. Coast was clear. Then he reached down and rearranged himself so his erection lay straight up against his belly. It filled out the last few centimeters, and he gently lowered his codpiece with a sigh. Shades of cadethood. He hadn’t had to hide a raging boner under his armor in years, but hell if it didn’t bring with it some charged nostalgia.

“Getting a little eager, there, Rex?”

“Oya, sir,” Rex replied, and tugged the blanket down to bare Cody’s cock to the cool medbay air. “Like you’ve got room to judge.”

“Not judging just, _shit_ , just appreciating.”

Rex didn’t spare much for formalities. Fast and hard Cody wanted, so fast and hard he’d get. He tasted sharp and acrid, the sickly-sweet of bacta mingling badly with disinfectant and ball-sweat, but Cody was right—they’d done worse.

Cody choked on his own breath, arching up only to fall back with a pained groan. Rex pressed his thighs down into the bed and sucked for all he was worth, chasing the nasty taste and washing it out with spit.

“Rex, _Rex_ , shit—” Cody fumbled and grabbed the headboard; his other hand came back down on Rex’s head, not quite shoving him onto his cock, but clenching his fingers as best he could against Rex’s buzzed hair. Rex shoved himself lower down the bed, so he could get a better angle; there: Cody’s cockhead went against the soft part of the back of his throat, and he could swallow easier. His salivary glands tingled under his jaw, and things got wet and sloppy with a quickness, but it was fine, because Rex had cocksucking down to a science, by now.

Cody was just short of writhing, his thighs twitching, his abs clenching. Rex reached up with one hand and scratched at his thatch of pubes, dislodging flakes of dried bacta, and Cody looked down at him, his face red and his eyes burning. “Shoulders,” he said in a guttural voice. “So I can brace better.”

Rex obediently hoisted one of Cody’s legs over his shoulder. The other was trapped under the blanket, which was a pity, because Rex would like an awful lot to feel Cody’s thighs on either side of his head. Surrounded. Swallowing and swallowed by. But Cody was in medbay, and they were on a timer, and Rex may have been a fucking idiot—he was _such_ a fucking idiot—but he had _some_ common sense to his name.

One hand around Cody’s thigh. The other around his shaft. He sucked like his life depended on it, because given that he was chancing the medics’ ire, it likely did.

He felt Cody’s orgasm like a storm front cresting the horizon. A slow, surging clench of muscle in his thighs and abdomen.

“Rex, I’m—”

Rex hummed in reply, driving his tongue into the sweet spot under the head, and that was it. Cody’s cock hardened even further, the head driving into the back of Rex’s throat, and he was coming in hot spurts. It wasn’t much of an improvement over the bacta—painkillers and stress hormones made them all taste bitter—but Rex swallowed it down because it was evidence, and because it was _Cody_ , and he didn’t think about it too often, but he kind of liked the idea of keeping part of the Marshal Commander of the 3rd Systems Army with him. Cody’s lovers were few and far between; he and Rex weren’t exclusive, but maybe, when he was drinking down Cody’s load, Rex could admit he got territorial.

“What in the _fuck_ is going on down there!”

Reality intruded. The heart monitor was screaming like a demented astro droid, and footsteps were coming down the ward at a furious stomp. Rex pulled himself off Cody’s cock with a slick pop. Blanket up over his waning hard-on, side rail fixed back in place, all in time for Kix—Rex almost laughed, of course it was Kix, who else would be the supervising medic—came around the privacy screen, looking a mix of furious and worried. The worry slipped away when he took in the both of them, red-faced and trying to look innocent.

“You missed a spot,” Kix said waspishly. Rex swiped at his chin, and sure enough, a smear of white shone out against his glove.

“Coercion,” Cody said, still panting and sweaty. “I ordered him to.”

“My left nut, you did,” Rex snapped back.

“Out,” Kix said, his brow raining thunder. “Sex is not allowed in my medbay, and if you can’t keep yourself from molesting the patients—”

“Hey!” Cody said, his own expression going dark.

“And _you_ should know better! How many times have you lectured troops for inappropriate sexual conduct!”

“I’ll see you when they let you out,” Rex said quietly, reaching for his helmet.

Cody reached out and snagged his arm. He didn’t say anything, but it was all there in his eyes to see. All the emotions they didn’t dare risk airing, lest the war kill them for it. Rex leaned down and kissed him. Kix huffed overhead, but he didn’t stop it.

Until Rex slipped Cody a little tongue.

“Fett’s _sake!_ ”

“You owe me,” Rex said smugly.

“ _Out!_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> kaa: i can't claim originality for rex teasing cody with the movie, i got it off an r/militarystories post, [found here](https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/c1wce7/the_drill_sergeant_cadet_meltdown_phase_2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x). go, read. it's hysterical.


End file.
